


Five of Cups

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [17]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Kerberos Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 15:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23713417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: The Five of Cups: Grief, abandonment, loss, emotional instabilityKeith gets the news about the Kerberos Mission.
Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686346
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Five of Cups

The Garrison hadn’t even fucking told them.

When Keith had woken up at 5 in the morning to a phone call from Dr. Holt, he thought at first she was somehow calling him in her sleep. But then he’d picked up, drowsy and confused, and Dr. Holt was crying. She told him not to turn on the news, to sit down, to focus on his breathing. She told him that the Kerberos Mission had been declared a loss.

He didn’t remember much of the conversation after that.

He appreciated it, that she called to tell him herself. He’d been over to their house for dinner a few times after the launch, connected by the people they knew sharing a spaceship millions of miles away. Dr. Holt was nice, a genuinely kind person, and Katie had been weird, but the good kind of weird that egged Keith into a debate with her about the existence of the Ozark Howler.

But that didn’t matter anymore, none of it did. The one person who mattered, the one person who cared, was now just a corpse, floating in the vacuum of space.

Keith wondered, not for the first time, if there was something about him, something _wrong_ , that made people keep their distance from him, that punished those that dared to get close.

The bell rang, signaling the start of class, but Keith didn’t move. He’d just laid in bed for one, two, three days. No one had bothered him. There was no one left to care whether he went to class, whether he was eating, whether he was okay.

He almost ignored it, when his phone rang on the fourth day, but he glanced down to see Katie’s name on the screen, and he at least owed her a response.

“Katie,” he said.

“It’s fucking _bullshit_!” she screamed at him, which was at least enough of a jolt to get him to start paying attention.

“What?”

“The news! They’re fucking blaming Lieutenant Shirogane for the crash!”

“They’re _what_ ,” Keith growled.

“I know! He was the best pilot the Garrison had! I think they’re covering for themselves. I think there was a mechanical failure and they don’t want to admit it, so they’re blaming the easiest person to blame, and he can’t even fucking defend himself and it’s their fault!”

He hung up on her - later he felt kind of bad about it - and marched down the corridors, past the classrooms, past the cafeteria, past all the other offices, until he reached Commander Iverson’s door. It was locked, but he didn’t fucking care, jamming his knife into the handle mechanism and shoving it open.

“What - Kogane!” Iverson barked at him, probably expecting a salute, but Keith wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. It occurred to him that he probably looked like shit: hair and clothes unwashed, bags under his eyes.

He didn’t fucking care.

“How fucking _dare you_ blame Shiro for this!” he yelled, slamming a hand down on Iverson’s desk, knocking a picture frame over in the process.

Iverson narrowed his eyes. “I’m going to let your tone slip this one time, _cadet_ , because I know you’re grieving. Lieutenant Shirogane was not infallible, nor was he healthy.”

“He had it under control, you and I both know it.”

“What I _know_ ,” he said, “is that the Kerberos Mission was lost without registering any mechanical faults. If it’s not the ship, it’s the pilot. That’s what our evidence has concluded.”

“You’re lying! You’re just lying to cover your own ass so you’re going to throw Shiro’s memory under the bus!”

“You have five seconds to take that back and apologize for the accusation, cadet.” He actually started fucking counting, after that, and Keith saw red.

The next thing he knew, his knuckles were a little sore, and Iverson was leaned over his desk, both hands clutching at his left eye.

“You,” Iverson growled, “are expelled for assaulting a senior officer.”

“Good!” Keith screamed back. “At least this way you can’t kill your second-best pilot too with any more of your fucking lies!” He turned on his heel and stalked back to his dorm, making it inside just as the bell rang to signal the end of the last period.

He knew that Iverson would be calling his social worker; he still had over a year to go before he turned 18, but if he had to sit down and meet a new family or, god forbid, get shipped off to the group home again, he was going to lose his fucking mind.

He’d be gone before they got the chance.

He thought about Dr. Holt, who had invited him into her home before, who understood a tiny bit of the grief that he was feeling, but he couldn’t impose. She’d lost two people, and she had to take care of her own daughter before dealing with anyone else’s shit.

He thought about Adam, who he hadn’t spoken to since before the launch, who had seemed more loyal to the Garrison than he had been to Shiro, and dismissed the idea.

He thought about his dad, and his childhood house not far from here. It had burnt to the ground years ago, but the little shack where his dad had sat for hours and “listened to the stars” was still standing, and Keith had the key for it hidden in the lining of his jacket.

It was quick work to throw his meager belongings into a bag: clothes, toiletries, knife, some canteens of water and protein bars he’d squirreled away. He’d have to lose the data pad, since it belonged to the Garrison and he didn’t have the technical skills to keep it from broadcasting its location. He left all his shitty uniforms, too, grateful to shed that part of his life and change into his civs. It was easy enough to school his expression as he went past the guard at the gate outside, claiming he was going off on an afternoon hike; it would probably be at least an hour before anyone noticed he was missing, and by then he’d be long gone. He hefted his single duffel bag higher on his shoulder and took off into the desert. He wasn’t sure if the old shack was even livable, but it didn’t really matter.

Nothing mattered.


End file.
